May 26, 2010

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A source sends on a copy of this aggressive attack ad financed by a little-known group called the Alliance for America's Future and aimed at Rick Scott, the former hospitals CEO and health legislation foe challenging Attorney General Bill McCollum for the Republican nomination in Florida.

The group recently got into legal trouble over ads it was airing for a candidate in Nevada and its funding is not clear. But the group appears tied to the local Republican establishment: The group's media buyer is McLaughlin and Associates, which also places ads for McCollum, for the Republican Governors Association, and for the Republican Party of Florida.

The Miami Herald reports that McCollum's local allies appear to be financing the spot, which begins airing tomorrow and focuses on the massive fraud investigation that led to Scott's departure from Columbia/HCA that ended Scott's health care career.

"Stop Medicare care fraud -- call and report companies like Rick Scott's," says the narrator, in a twist on the usual attack-masked-as-issue-ad.

His former company paid a huge settlement to the federal government, and the incident was used against him in the health care debate. Scott says the company should have fought the charges.

The new media buy will provide a boost to McCollum, who is finding it hard to keep up with the spending of the self-financing Scott.

The group has planned a $906,000 buy through June 2, which is more than McCollum has spend in the race to date, $804,296.

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I am glad to see someone begin to fight back, because Mr. Scott is up to 24% in the polls and that is way to high for anyone with his background, with his removal from HCA from this major medicare scandal. I am amazed that so many Floridians are falling for Scott's crap!

This is another case of the nature of process between business and law being set up to be casualties of political misleading. Just as media foolishly speak of GM needing the bailout to avoid bankruptcy as if bankruptcy meant they'd go out of business. Just as media shamelessly call our illegal alien fiasco an immigration problem. They, media and typical politicians from both sides, but mainly democrats of course, massage our language to diminish our problems. This ad is a microcosm of the problem and the tea party symbolic of Americans' outrage.
At the most political level, though, McCollum will lose to Sink. McCollum is starting to lose ground to Scott. McCollum's a career government employee. In that vein, he's more representative of the problem than Sink, who was president of Bank of America. I think voters would vote for either Sink or Scott over McCollum. So, for the sake of Republicans, we need to support Scott over McCollum just as we did Rubio over Crist, as both Crist and McCollum do plenty of damage to us that even Democrats can't accomplish.

The ONLY way I'll vote for McCollum is if he is in a one on one race against Alex Sink .... and even then I'll have to think about it. Scott appears to me to be someone like Christie in NJ that'll shake things up .... McCollum will be more of the same ol' same ol'.

Finally, the hypocrisy of the right is being exposed. They preach against fraud and waste while their corporate wall street and health executive buddies take American taxpayers to the cleaners. How many trillions have American taxpayers had to fork over because corporate America uses the fed like a prostitute?